- A moody pivot from a rising player in the New York City underground.
- Ben Shirken got their start making chilled-out pop as Beshken in the mid-2010s. Then a music student at NYU, the early output from that project was clearly the work of a promising young talent. But it also possessed a certain college quality—the production was pristine, but the arrangements were held back by the limitations of amateur bedroom songwriting. In the years since they graduated college in 2019, Shirken has dipped their toes into increasingly leftfield waters. They've launched the experimental label and performance series 29 Speedway, made leftfield mixes for NTS and The Lot Radio and put together an excellent compilation that championed an adventurous style of ambient techno.
Shirken's new record, Shards Of Axel, arrives under their newer alias, Ex Wiish. Released on Anthony Naples' Incienso imprint, it finds Shirken reaching an inventive new peak. The album is intended to make the listener feel like they're in a video game, and uses illbient-inspired atmospheres to evoke a glitchy stroll through some hypothetical cityscape. Across 13 tracks, intriguing grooves churn beneath rippling atmospheres and warped samples. Gone are the familiar stylings of an artist who once collaborated with Gus Dapperton back in 2016. In their place, a bold new spirit of adventure.
Shards Of Axel is moody and uneasy, but the tracklist splits the difference between razor-sharp IDM and dirge-like ambient. These distinct sonic lanes offset each other nicely, the more rousing cuts suited for the emotional catharsis of this gritty journey. "Progress Trap" plays into the trademark Incienso sound, with a dubbiness that recalls DJ Python's Mas Amable. "Externa Port" is uptempo and whirring, carried by jungly percussion and synths that recall a cordless phone going haywire. "Web9"'s off-kilter no-wave rhythm is alien and industrial. And the title track is especially severe, with lead-footed drums and serrated melodic flourishes. At its most driving, the music on Shards Of Axel could pass for the score to a Safdie Brothers' film.
The LP's more withdrawn side is like a skyline wrapped in toxic haze. Opener "The Wavering Knife" shifts from airy to plodding, like observing Shirken's imaginary sprawl from above before being quickly dropped onto its seediest corner. "10,000 ft" hovers in a blunted smog, reedy synth arpeggiations underlined by a wash of trebly noise. "Today, My Friend" is embellished with gauzy vocals from Gabrielle Ledet and Dorothy Carlos, who peek out from behind a bulwark of found-sound dissonance. For every brash moment on the record, there's one more tethered to the resignation that defines existence within a metropolis.
It's easy to imagine how life in New York City might have impacted Shards Of Axel. Things in the record's universe are often beaten down, as if agitated by the screech of a subway running on weathered rails. The album dropped towards the start of a summer ravaged by wildfire smoke, as Shirken's home base suddenly began to resemble the dystopia constructed on Shards Of Axel—a serendipitous bit of timing that makes the album feel all the richer. Even when Shirken is building an uncharted world, their music can't be distanced from the groundbreaking energy of the New York City underground in all its forms.
Tracklist01. The Wavering Knife
02. Ashes Of Ambivalence
03. Externa Port
04. A Passive Wave
05. Shards Of Axel
06. Today, My Friend feat. Gabrielle Ledet & Dorothy Carlos
07. Web9
08. Resident Deceiver
09. Progress Trap
10. Cherry
11. iRiS
12. 10,000 ft.
13. Like A Stone In Paper feat. Sophia Lucie